CIA Harrassing IMC Praha in runup to anti NATO Demos

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday November 16, 2002 16:26 by blasted

Intimidation of Grassroots Journalists in Prague.

On November 14th, a week before the NATO-summit in Prague, a member of the Indymedia Prague collective visited the owner of an internet cafe in Prague to inquire about using his cafe for media coverage of the Anti-NATO Summit. Several minutes after his visit, the owner was approached by two individuals who claimed to be CIA-agents. The showed the owner their badges and then produced pictures of the Indymedia person who had just left. They offered 50,000 Czech crowns (about 1.700 EUR) for the information and logfiles of Indymedia people using this cafe.

Indymedia is a world-wide grassroots media source, providing Internet news forums where people can publish their stories about events, demonstrations and protests they took part in. It is the policy of Indymedia to provide an open platform accessible to everyone. Indymedia has no secrets. On first sight, it is hardly understandable why a secret service should take interest in it. This comes into a different light when one looks at the treatment of grassroots media and especially Indymedia at previous anti-globalisation protests. A number of times, grassroots media was a prime target of police attacks. At the protest against the G8-meeting in Genova 2001, the Indymedia Center was raided by the police and Indymedia became victims of police brutality.

The incident at the Prague Internet cafe is an attempt to intimidate grassroots media and to suppress free uncensored news coverage of the anti-NATO meeting in Prague. Stay tuned for more intimidation information!

Prague Indymedia Collective